


What Gets in the Way

by Raine_Wynd



Series: The Dragon Murders [2]
Category: The Sentinel, Witchblade (TV)
Genre: Community: crossovers100, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-28
Updated: 2008-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 18:38:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raine_Wynd/pseuds/Raine_Wynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sequel to The Dragon Murders. Can Sara trust her new partner with her secret? Will Blair and Jim come to an understanding about their new relationship? Written for the crossovers 100 LJ challenge, prompt #21: friends. J/B</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Gets in the Way

**Author's Note:**

> Do I still have to disclaim them if they breed plot bunnies? Sequel to The Dragon Murders, another crossovers_100 fic: prompt 21: friends. J/B
> 
> Takes place appropriately two months after the end of The Dragon Murders. If you haven't read it, be warned that this is not only post-TSByS, but a fic in which Blair has his own place, two blocks away from Jim. Also, Sara Pezzini has moved to Cascade, and the Great Rewind did not happen.
> 
> Rated R for male/male sex and adult themes; I can't seem to write anything gen these days.
> 
> Thanks to Kickair8p, Annie, and technoshaman for the beta, encouragement, and general support.
> 
> Soundtrack: Poets of the Fall — "Diamonds and Tears", Sharon Little — "What Gets in the Way", Breaking Benjamin — "We're Not Alone Here", Saving Abel — "Addicted", Modern West — "Long Hot Night", Kevin Rudolf — "Live a Life"

_2003 _

"Getting to be a habit, you here," Jim teased the Italian-American woman who lay in his bed, stretching out the kinks in her lithe, athletic body. Light from the skylight glinted off the silver and carnelian bracelet she wore on her right wrist as she reached for the coffee mug he held. Giving the mug up easily, he watched her sit up and take a greedy sip, closing her eyes in pleasure at the taste. The sheet slipped off her body, revealing she‘d slept nude save for a pair of boxers. For a moment, he enjoyed the sight of a beautiful woman in his bed, marveling, as he‘d come to do, that he could look at her as a friend and not as a lover. For a moment, he wished it was Blair in his bed instead, but he pushed the pang of regret aside. He’d had the opportunity last night to refuse her company, but she’d needed him, and Blair _had _lost the coin toss.

Amused by the now-familiar way his current bedmate reacted to coffee, Jim watched her drain half the mug as he took a seat on the bed nearby.

“If you minded," she responded finally, opening her eyes, "you wouldn‘t bring me coffee."

He chuckled at that, then sobered, hating he had to break the ease of the moment. "I don‘t mind, Sara," he said carefully, "but you’re not dealing with whatever’s causing you nightmares. This is the sixth time in the last three weeks you’ve come here, looking for peace. I’m no shrink, but I know from experience this isn’t good.”

"Kicking me out of your bed already?" she teased lightly. “I thought you liked having me here.”

“That’s not the point,” he noted quietly.

She sighed and drew her knees to her chest. “I interrupted your plans with Blair last night, didn’t I?”

Too well aware she knew his secrets as well as he was starting to know hers, Jim didn‘t try to hide. Still, he let out a breath, wondering for the millionth time what kind of divine insanity was responsible for his luck to be a Sentinel and wind up friends with the wielder of the Witchblade. In Sara, he‘d found a kindred spirit, someone whose experiences with the hand of mystical destiny had left her disinclined to trust easily. Jim repaid her trust by being as honest and open as he could be, in the hopes that she would do the same with him.

“Sandburg understands. He‘d be less of a friend to both of us if he didn‘t.”

“You didn’t have to let me stay.” Shrugging, Sara rose and set her now-empty mug on the nightstand. From the railing, she grabbed the bra, t-shirt, and jeans she‘d discarded the night before.

“Right,” Jim said dryly, “like I could. Even Sandburg said you looked like you were going to fall apart without someone to hold you.”

Sara’s eyes narrowed as she put on her bra. “What, did you two toss a coin?”

Now Jim grinned. “And if we did?”

“Explains that comment Blair made before he left,” she said with a shrug. Sitting back on the bed, she looked at Jim as she pulled on her jeans. “I don’t want to cause you problems. I know you and he haven’t been lovers that long.”

“Did that thing on your wrist give you the full color news or you just guessed?” Jim growled, hating that the semi-sentient gauntlet could give her the Technicolor film of it all if she willed it. “Do you even get any privacy with it?”

“I don‘t even need to be a detective to put two and two together,” Sara reminded him testily, glaring at him, “and no, I don’t ask that cursed thing to snoop on my friends.”

For a moment, Jim’s paranoia warred with his trust in Sara. She wasn’t his lover, but she was a hell of a lot closer than most of his friends — a sister of the heart, someone whose paranoia rivaled his own on some days and who understood what kind of twisted gift it was to be destined for something that was both a blessing and a curse. Still, he knew she didn’t have the same sort of fine control over the Witchblade’s visions as he did his senses, and he had no way of knowing what it had told her.

Seeing the look on his face, Sara bit off, “Damn it, I’m not going to out you, so you can quit thinking I might. I know what it feels like to have people you work with think you’re a freak.”

_Oh, fuck, _Jim thought, _she’s pissed. I know better — she was harassed in New York for her abilities, for the things she‘d done that she couldn‘t explain how she was able to do, for knowledge that she wasn‘t supposed to have, and from that look in her eyes, for simply being a woman in Homicide._

He started to speak, but she held up a hand to ward off his words. “I know I showed up at nearly midnight last night, and I know what passion looks like when I’ve interrupted it, especially since you took so long to answer the door.” She chuckled softly as her temper eased. “Even if I hadn't seen that, I’ve been spending enough time with both of you since I moved here to notice just how much closer you’ve gotten since Blair got out of the hospital last month.”

He breathed in his relief, even as he felt guilty for his doubt. “That obvious?” Jim worried. “I’m not ready to wave any flags here.”

Sara didn’t immediately reply as she put on her T-shirt, then shook her head. “It’s not obvious to anyone who hasn’t been around you and him as much as I have lately. Someone who doesn’t know you that well might think you‘d settled a long-standing argument or something like that.”

“In a way, we did,” Jim admitted.

At her look of inquiry, he elaborated, “He lived with me here for almost five years; I didn’t want him to move, but he said it was necessary. Called it a rite of passage into adulthood, added in some blather about gossipmongers, and how if I got really mad at him, he had somewhere else to go.” He grimaced in remembered pain. “Tried to tell him he always had a home here, but I promised I’d give him time and space to reconsider.”

Sara considered that a moment, her face reflecting her agile mind. “How long ago did you make that promise to him?"

“Four years." He waited for her to finish buckling her belt before he handed her the socks he’d picked up from the floor.

Sara nodded her thanks. “Something tells me during those four years, you could’ve given a monk lessons in control, Jim, but I can see why you waited." Balancing herself against the railing, she put on her socks.

He laughed shortly. “So says the woman who brushes off any guy who tries to flirt with you. I know you like men.”

“Too bad the ones I really like are currently involved with each other, and I‘d be an idiot if I fucked that up.”

She flashed him a smile, but he could see a hint of her ever-present grief in the smile. After three months of her friendship, he knew her grief went bone-deep. She’d lost more than most — two partners in less than a year, a trusted friend, the respect of her peers, and her freedom as someone who‘d once scoffed at mystical voodoo. The loss had eventually driven her to move to Cascade. He understood that kind of grief; it had been hell trying to adjust to being a civilian after Peru . Something in her words and the way she‘d pulled in on herself made him realize she was missing someone she hadn‘t mentioned yet.

“So who do I have to kill back in New York for your broken heart?”

“No need, I already did that,” Sara said tightly, hugging her stomach. She offered him a crooked smile. “It was destiny I fell in love with him and that he died by my hand.”

“Destiny sucks ass,” Jim swore, hating the picture she painted. “So what kind of criminal was he?”

She met his eyes and let go of her stomach. “Oh, the worst kind,” she said, a hint of her usual sarcastic humor in her voice. The tension he felt drained slightly, but he found himself wondering just what kind of person could have been destined for Sara and shivered at the parallels his mind drew.

“Oh? Thief, con, murderer?”

“No, a musician,” Sara said, her lips curving in a more genuine smile when he chuckled. “Famous, to boot.” Then her smile faded. “Except he forgot to mention he used to be a terrorist, and his friends wouldn’t let him stop being one.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, trying for nonchalance and failing miserably to someone who’d learned to read her body language. As always, the vulnerability she tried so hard to disguise tugged at him, made him wish he could protect her from harm. “I’ll meet him in our next lives.”

“Shitty comfort for the present one,” Jim returned as he pulled her into his arms for a reassuring hug. Not for the first time since he‘d started getting to know her, he wished he could do more to show her she wasn‘t as alone as she‘d learned to believe.

She wallowed in the embrace a moment before saying, “Come on, I‘m starving, and you know the bakery downstairs runs out of the ham croissants I like. If we hurry, I might get some before I have to get to work. Some of us don’t get to be lazy bums like some senior detectives I know.”

Jim chuckled, aware that Sara had agreed to fill in for another detective who needed the time off to watch her son’s baseball game. He didn’t comment, though; he knew well the value of such favors.

They headed downstairs, pausing as Jim put on his shoes before he grabbed his keys and cell phone from the basket by the door while Sara picked up her motorcycle helmet and jacket from where she’d left them.

“Jim?” Sara asked before they stepped into the hallway.

“What?”

“Next time I show up, interrupt your plans with Blair like that, would you tell me to just go away? I promise I won’t take it personally.”

Jim snorted. “Right, and Sandburg won’t kill me for pulling a stunt like that. You looked like you’d been dreaming of hell, Pez.” Her flinch told him she had been, and internally, he winced at his choice of words. He knew she dreamed of the things the Witchblade knew, which not only encompassed history, but of things to come and things that might be. He and Blair had coaxed the explanation out of her some time back, after they‘d been treated to a demonstration of what the Witchblade could do.

Still, Sara’s quick reply told him he was forgiven for his slip. “What if you handed me the keys to his place? I’d certainly sleep better there than at that damned apartment of mine.” She stepped into the hallway, sliding her helmet over her forearm and draping her jacket on top.

“Isn’t your lease there almost up?” Jim asked, stepping out into the hallway and then locking the door. “Why don’t you talk to Sandburg into sharing his place with you?”

“Just because you can hear half the planet through the walls and my landlord’s a creep doesn’t mean—”

“Pez, you dropped off your rent and he was undressing you with his eyes. I could almost hear him wishing you were a cop in uniform so he could —”

Sara shuddered as she headed for the elevator. “Gee, thanks, Ellison, I could’ve done without that visual.”

Jim laughed, aware the use of his last name was a measure of her mood. “Hey, if it helps you move to someplace safer,” he pointed out.

“I’ve lived in worse places than that studio," she argued back, though without much heat.

"Yeah, but do you have to?" Jim countered, and she scowled.

"You just want an excuse to get Blair back in your place."

Jim shot her a look at that comment and raised an eyebrow. "If anything, Pez, I need one that doesn’t raise questions like him moving back in now would."

That stopped her as the elevator doors opened. Obviously realizing her error, she excused herself with, "I need more coffee."

"You always need more coffee, Pez," he observed as they stepped into the elevator. Their companionable teasing lasted through their orders at the bakery.

He had the day off, and he knew exactly how he wanted to spend it. A glance at Sara told him she knew exactly what he had planned. He therefore wasn’t surprised when, after they’d made their purchases, she hurried him out of the bakery, turning him in the direction of Blair’s condo, two blocks away.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re as subtle as a brick?” he teased her as she shrugged into her motorcycle jacket.

“Oh, once or twice.” Sara grinned unrepentantly, moving towards where she’d parked her motorcycle. “See you later, Jim. Tell Blair I said hi.”

Jim laughed again and headed up the street, hearing the distinctive roar of Sara’s Buell as she fired it up and eased into traffic.

Just as he reached the front door of Blair’s building, his cell phone rang.

Glancing at the display, he saw that it was his brother. For a moment, his desire to see Blair warred with wanting to find out what Steven needed. He‘d just talked to his brother the day before, and he knew that this being a Friday, Steven would be headed into work. Silently, he hoped it wouldn’t be anything that would take up his day, even as he found himself glad that it wasn’t work. It wasn’t the first time his plans to have time alone with Blair had been interrupted; they just tended to be for reasons illustrating that Cascade had rightly earned its reputation for being America’s most dangerous city.

“Hello?"

"Jim, it‘s Steven. Any chance you can come pick me up? I, uh, got into a little trouble last night."

"What kind of trouble?" Jim growled suspiciously. He’d had plans, damn it, he thought. For a moment, resentment rose up at his younger sibling’s phone call.

"Well, I didn‘t kill anybody and put them into a support pillar for a building," Steven tried to joke, then added hastily, "Just drank too much and tried to drive home. I‘m at the North Precinct jail."

"Jesus, Steven. How much did you drink?"

"Don‘t yell, my head‘s killing me," Steven snapped. "Look, can you just get me? If you‘re busy, just get a hold of my assistant —"

Jim blew out a breath, resigned to having most of the day consumed. "I‘m not calling Tracy over this; you don‘t put your secretary through this kind of shit. Where‘s Lisa?"

"I don‘t know, I threw her out." Steven swallowed hard. "She was fucking some kid on the couch."

Jim‘s heart ached at the words. He‘d gotten a lot closer to his brother in the years since a case reunited them, and knew just how much Lisa meant to Steven. Jim had been proud to be his brother‘s best man at his wedding three years previously, and had honestly thought Lisa was a good match for him. He‘d had his concerns over Lisa‘s need to be the center of attention, but Steven had doted on her, so it hadn‘t seemed like it would be a problem.

"How much is your bail?"

"I don‘t know. God, my head‘s killing me. Please, Jim."

"All right," Jim sighed. "Let me make some calls, and you just sit tight."

"Not going anywhere," Steven said wryly. "And thanks."

Jim sighed again and disconnected the call. For a moment, he hesitated, wishing he hadn‘t answered the phone. Then the door to Blair‘s building opened and out stepped Blair. His formerly long hair had been cropped short, and Jim was still getting used to difference it made in the way Blair looked.

Blair took one look at him and groaned. "Okay, what‘s the emergency?"

"Steven‘s in jail. DUI. He needs me to bail him out."

Blair accepted the news with a nod. "He found out Lisa‘s cheating on him."

Astonished, Jim stared at his lover. "How the hell did you know?"

"Sue Mai said she saw Lisa with someone at Tokai‘s yesterday. She called me last night to ask if Steven and Lisa had separated; she said Lisa didn‘t seem to care who was watching." Sue Mai was one of Blair‘s oldest and best friends, and appeared to have recovered well from the kidnapping and attempted murder that had put her and Blair in the hospital.

"Why didn‘t you say anything?"

"Didn‘t know until this morning when I checked my voicemail. I was too tired last night to bother checking it then." Blair offered Jim a rueful smile. "Why don‘t we go back to your place so we can make some calls — my neighbor‘s practicing his drums again — and you can give me the bagels in that bag?"

"How do you know I have bagels?" Jim asked.

Blair shot him a look. "Because you love me, that‘s why." So saying, he took possession of the bag and headed towards Jim‘s place.

Shaking his head, Jim followed Blair. It didn‘t take long for them to reach the loft.

Blair set the bag down on his kitchen counter as Jim shut the door behind them. Once Jim had completed that task, Blair closed the distance between them. "Before you go bail your brother out," he announced, "I have one request."

"Oh?" Jim raised an eyebrow.

Blair backed him up against the door and kissed him hungrily until the smell of pheromones was a heady cologne in Jim‘s brain and he nearly forgot he had other plans. Then Blair stepped back, panting with the force of his own passion. "Just remember, tonight, you‘re mine. No phones, no friends, no family to interrupt, and God willing, no crimes we need to go investigate. If we have to, we’ll park Steven at my place, but you and I have a date. You got that?"

Jim breathed carefully and willed his arousal to subside. "Loud and clear, Chief."

Blair nodded, satisfied for the moment. "You need me to make any of those calls?"

"Call Sue Mai back. I trust her word, but she might have some idea about whom Lisa was with. Damn her, she had to pick one of the city‘s most popular restaurants. If Lisa was at Tokai‘s, it‘s going to be news, and Dad‘s going to hear about it if he hasn‘t already — either from his buddies at the club or some enterprising reporter. Last thing either of us needs is for my father to go off on being embarrassed."

Blair shook his head. "Probably too late for that," he said knowingly.

Jim smiled grimly. "Probably, but we‘ll deal. He‘ll come down harder on Steven, too, blame me for it somehow."

"Or me," Blair agreed, picking up his cell phone. He was grateful to William Ellison for the help he‘d given Blair in the past, but like Jim, he was well aware that William had a nearly irrational need to live up to a standard of conduct that had at times cost him dearly.

"I‘m going to call Steven‘s assistant, let her know he‘s not going to be in today then I need to get a hold of the family lawyer." Jim grimaced. There were days when he hated not only being one of the most recognized detectives on the force, but a member of Cascade‘s richest families. This was shaping up to be one of them.

"You want me to come along when you get Steven?"

Jim shook his head. "Better if you didn‘t," he said. "You can pretend you know nothing of this later, if necessary. Didn‘t you say you wanted to go to the apothecary and restock my medicine cabinet?"

“Yeah, I did, and you can’t go in there because they‘re always burning incense.” Blair sighed resignedly then brightened. "Maybe Sue Mai will want to go with me." So saying, he began dialing.

****

"Jim, why are we stopping?" Steven asked when he realized Jim wasn‘t going through the stop sign in the upscale neighborhood where Steven lived. It had taken a few hours to get through the paperwork for Steven’s release and was now late afternoon.

"Dad‘s here," Jim told him. "I can see his car. You want avoid him for a while?"

"Duh." He grimaced, grateful his brother could see that far. "I need a shower. Just let me borrow some clothes and I‘ll go —"

“—nowhere without a ride,” Jim interrupted. "Your car‘s impounded, remember? We won‘t get it out of the lockup until Tuesday. I saw your BAC on the paperwork, Stevie. You’ll be lucky if you get to even drive the car home then."

"Shit," Steven swore. "Look, I don‘t want to ruin your day off. Knowing you, you had plans with Blair. I‘ll call a cab from the loft and I‘ll be out of your hair."

Jim glanced at his brother, caught between the desire to spend as much of the day as possible with Blair and needing to see that Steven was safe. "Promise me you won‘t go chasing after Lisa."

Steven shuddered at the thought. "And do what? I‘m hung over, not stupid. What the hell do you think I‘d do?"

"Well, I know what I want to do to her," Jim pointed out, anger and disgust tingeing his voice. "And I know you’ve got the same temper as me."

Steven stared at him a long moment, feeling a weird sense of brotherhood. _There are times_, he thought wryly, _when_ _I realize we’re more alike than I ever thought._ “I figured drinking was a good way to keep that impulse under control," he admitted. "Don‘t go risking your badge for me, Jim. She‘s not worth it, and seeing her last night like that was just the last straw. I tried so hard to please her, and nothing I did was good enough."

Jim studied him a moment and Steven resisted the urge to squirm under that penetrating gaze. Not for the first time, Steven found himself wishing he could fake calm, but the heartbreak was too fresh, the hangover still strong despite the Tylenol he’d scrounged from the first aid kit Jim kept in the truck, and he had a Sentinel for an older brother.

“I’ll remind you that you said that when you’re pissed at her,” Jim said wryly. “And who said I’d do anything to risk my badge? There are other ways to get back at her, and none of them are illegal.”

Steven groaned. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” he told Jim. Curiosity had him asking, “How did your divorce with Carolyn go?”

Jim snorted. His brief marriage to the then-head of forensics had ended amicably when they’d realized they made better coworkers than husband and wife. At the time, he and Steven hadn‘t been speaking; it had only been in the wake of a case at the racetrack Steven‘s company managed that the pair had become closer.

“Probably a hell of a lot more amicably than I suspect yours is going to be.”

“Gee, bro, you’re so encouraging,” Steven said dryly. He sighed. “Might as well get the confrontation with Dad over with; if we stall, he’ll only get madder.”

“You sure?”

“You want him to start in on your relationship? You know he’s never understood your relationship with Blair.”

“Hell no,” Jim said furiously. His father’s prejudices had loopholes for specific people, Blair included, but Jim wasn’t in the mood for any sort of confrontation. He let out a short breath. “Sandburg’s offered you his place for the night. You can call Dad from there or from my place.”

Steven snorted. “Coward,” he accused Jim as Jim turned the truck around.

“Yeah, well, if you want to face Dad, you can get out.” Jim put the truck in park. “Of course, you’ll have to walk four blocks.”

“I’m not that hung over,” Steven said quickly. “What a pair we are — terrified of an old man.”

“I prefer to think of it as a strategic retreat,” Jim replied with a grim smile as he put the truck in gear.

Steven snorted and leaned back in his seat. “In that case? Keep driving.”

*****

“Rafe, what are you doing here?” Sara asked in surprise as she unlocked the front door of her apartment, having finished her fill-in shift. She glanced at her watch; it was now nearly six p.m. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten lunch.

“Captain’s orders,” Brian Rafe told her with a grin as he stepped away from the wall against which he‘d been lounging. Dressed in a green button-down shirt, khaki pants, and loafers, he looked like he just stepped out of some department store’s ad for casual menswear. “You need a dress for the ball, m’lady, and I’ve seen the inside of your closet.”

She shot him an annoyed look. “When?”

“When I was picking you up two days ago for work,” her partner said dryly. “Didn’t you read the memo about formalwear for VIP events?”

Sara stepped inside and set her motorcycle helmet down on the tiny kitchen counter. “Yeah, but I figured I had time.”

“Wrong answer,” Rafe told her. “The Cascade Hope Foundation’s annual charity ball is Thursday, and we’ve been picked for the security detail.” He raised a hand to forestall the objection he read in her face. “No, we can’t get out of it, it falls under the heading of VIP events for Major Crimes, and so help me if you suddenly develop a raging fever the night of the ball I’m going to drag Ellison over just to make sure you are actually sick.”

Startled, Sara stared at him. “How can he tell?” she asked a heartbeat too slow.

Rafe met her gaze. “He used to be a medic in the Army,” he said blandly, and Sara knew he was lying. He was too good a detective not to have figured out_ something_, for one thing, and the Witchblade tended to hiss in the back of her head when someone was lying. Added to that was the fact that she knew Rafe tended to use his model-quality looks to fool people into thinking he was brainless and dull-witted. Abruptly, she realized she‘d underestimated her partner, and wondered why she had been willing to take him at face value. Had she missed being partnered with Jim that much?

Jim had simply been her training partner, a temporary assignment while Blair had been doing work for the commissioner. Rafe had specifically requested that she be paired with him when the temporary assignment was over, and she’d seen no reason to object to that, even though Captain Banks had given her the opportunity to do so. There was no way Sara wanted to interfere with Jim’s partnership with Blair, yet she realized abruptly she’d been treating her partnership with Rafe as if it were temporary.

“You gonna stand there all day or are you coming with me? There’s a consignment shop over on Garnet Hill; they’re holding a few things I thought you might like.” Rafe flashed a grin, the smile lighting up his face. "I know you hate shopping, and my luck with malls sucks. Every time I go there, something happens and I end up having to fill out paperwork. If that doesn’t work, we may have to try the place my cousin recommended over by Ravensgate.”

Realizing he wasn’t going to explain any further, Sara accepted the redirect and proceeded to tease him about his luck with malls. If he wanted to pretend he didn’t know about Jim’s abilities, she was perfectly willing to go along. Later would be soon enough to ask if everyone in the department knew — and if she needed to come clean about being the wielder of the Witchblade.

She had a sinking feeling that the latter was going to need to happen a lot sooner than she wanted.

****

“I’m going to head out, Jim,” Steven announced right around the same time. “I feel a lot better now that I’ve had a shower and slept.”

Jim looked at his younger brother, seeing how much more refreshed he looked after a two-hour nap. “You sure?” he asked carefully, trying hard to disguise his relief at the idea.

Steven smiled ruefully. “I’ve already interrupted your plans enough,” he said. “Thanks for not hanging up on me.”

Uncomfortable at the reminder that he’d once been the kind of guy who would’ve done precisely that, Jim reached for the phone in the kitchen. “Yeah, well, you’re on the hook for the cab fare back to your place.” He paused as his senses detected Blair making his way up the stairs. “Unless you want us to drop you somewhere. You’re still welcome to crash at Sandburg’s.”

Steven shook his head and took possession of the cordless phone. “He still has that neighbor who plays drums — badly?” At the reluctant nod from his brother, Steven continued, “I promise, I’ll behave.” He dialed a number from memory. “Hey, Rajesh, how’s it going? I’m okay. Listen, you busy? No, no, I can’t go out, but can you do a favor and pick me up at my brother’s and take me back to my place?” He paused as Jim opened the door for Blair. “What? She did what?”

Jim had politely not been eavesdropping, but the shocked tone of his brother’s voice made him turn and look at him in concern. For half a second, he debated whether to listen in on the other end of the conversation, and decided it was better not to; if it was something Steven wanted him to know, he’d say so.

“Oh. Yeah, thanks to my dad I‘d heard she made a scene at Tokai’s. Twenty minutes? No, Jim’s got other plans, and I already took up most of his day off. Yeah, well, cops don’t get weekends off like the rest of us corporate slobs. Uh huh, see you soon.” Steven hung up the phone and took a seat at the breakfast bar.

“Rajesh?” Jim asked, not recognizing the name. “What happened to David?”

“He got jealous that I was spending more time with you guys than with him. Said I was wasting my time.” Steven’s mouth tightened in a thin line. “Let’s just say it was a shock to realize I’d called him my best friend, when I had no idea I’d picked him just because it made Dad happy that I had a friend who was the ‘right’ type.”

Jim made a sound of disgust. “Damn. I knew David was lying, but I couldn’t figure out what he was lying about.” Curious now, he asked, “So what’s wrong with hanging out with me?”

“Well, for starters, you and I weren’t supposed to ever get over our differences and decide we could be family, regardless of whatever nonsense our father dreams up. That we became good friends wasn’t supposed to happen either. Oh, and your choice of career eludes him greatly, as does your apparent raging homosexuality.”

Jim’s lips twitched at that and he fought to hide his smile. “Raging?”

Steven grinned. “Well, you haven’t made the papers for whom you’ve been dating lately, and he’s convinced that all cops are queers.” Steven shook his head disgustedly. “Enough about him. How much time we got before Blair arrives?”

“He’s on the second floor now, taking his time up the stairs since he’s carrying a couple of bags. Huh, the elevator must’ve quit working since we got home; it was working this morning. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, just wanted to be sure I wasn’t wrong.” Steven met his older brother’s eyes. “So, you planning on seducing him tonight?”

Startled, Jim stared at Steven. Even though Jim was aware his brother knew his feelings for Blair, he wasn‘t prepared for such a bold question. “What?”

“You hide it better than most people, but I’ve gotten to know you too well. You have that look that says you’re listening for someone, and you’ve been checking your watch since I got up. I haven’t seen you this impatient to get rid of me in years. Not since the last time I stopped over impulsively and you had the whole scene going — candles, good wine, music, food cooking on the stove — and you tried to convince me — and him — that you ‘just felt in a mood.’ I was shocked when you showed up on my doorstep later that night and said you needed a drink, but didn’t trust yourself in a bar without someone to watch out for you.”

“That was the night he told me he’d found a place of his own.” Remembered pain roughened Jim’s tone.

Steven nodded, remembering. “Yeah. Was the first time I realized you trusted me.”

Two pairs of blue eyes met in acknowledgment of how far they’d come as brothers who’d once been egged on to compete with each other for their father’s attention, until they’d been unable to talk to each other for fifteen years. Since the fiasco with Blair’s dissertation, Jim had made many changes in his life, including resolving to communicate more openly with the people about whom he cared most. He counted his relationship with his brother as one of his better successes.

“So, are you planning on seducing Blair?” Steven prodded.

“What, your love life’s falling to pieces so you need to be a voyeur?” Jim asked irritably, abruptly feeling uncomfortable at his brother’s curiosity.

Steven chuckled. “Why not? It’s not as if I don’t wish you well, or haven’t known you’ve been in love with him for years. Hell, for that matter, that he’s been in love with you for years. He moons over you when he thinks you’re not looking.”

“You’re a hopeless romantic.” Jim did his best to scoff, but it was a weak effort at best.

“So much for Dad’s attempts to condition it out of me,” Steven replied with a shrug. “So come, on, give. As I told you a few years ago, I’ll leave you the privilege of shocking the hell out of Dad — again. You live to give him a heart attack, don’t you?”

“If showing up alive after he thought I was dead didn’t do it, I’m not sure what will,” Jim shot back. He looked at Steven, marveling that he could joke about such things with him. More seriously, Jim noted, “He still wants to control both of us, as much as he can.”

“He can’t,” Steven retorted angrily. “I’m glad we didn’t go to my house. Talking to him when he called on your cell phone on the way here was bad enough. As if it’s my fault my wife cheated on me and decided to flaunt it in Tokai’s, where everyone could see. Bad enough to see her doing it in the living room with the fucking gardener, for God’s sake.” Steven drew in a deep breath and released it. “I refuse to believe that I’m making the same mistakes Dad did with our mother.”

“What, work all the time? You told me you’d made a promise not to work more than forty-five hours in a week, unless there was some crisis — and from what I’ve seen, you’ve managed for the most part. Quit believing Dad’s crap. He never made it home for anything we wanted to do, unless one of us won his favor — and that was subject to change. Our mother was even more dedicated to her career than he was.”

“I know,” Steven said with a tired sigh. “Did I ever tell you I used to think you lied about her leaving us for her work? Then I got old enough — and had enough of my own money — to hire a detective to find her, and discovered you’d been right all along. She died the year you graduated high school. Dad wasn’t thrilled when I told him I’d found out.”

Jim nodded, mouth tightening at the news. “Yeah, some reporter dug up the information and gave it to me when I came back from Peru. Like I really wanted to know that right then, on top of everyone else I was still grieving for.”

“All the more reason to enjoy now, isn’t it?” Steven countered.

“More reason to not fuck this up,” Jim replied quietly. “I honestly thought you and Lisa were going to buck the family tradition of failed relationships. And if I’m this obvious to you and Pez, then it’s going to be hell at work.” He snorted. “Hell, I’m surprised it hasn’t been worse.”

Steven shrugged. “If the Fourth of July party I went to a few weeks ago was any indication, people seem to think you guys have been together for years already. Besides, didn’t we talk about contingency plans a while ago, like you coming to work with me if it got really bad?”

“Yeah, but I like being a cop.” Jim didn‘t want to think about reinventing himself again; he‘d stay happily buried in the closet if it meant he could go on protecting his city.

Steven just shook his head, not surprised at Jim‘s denial. “Tell me something I don’t know — like whether I’m going to have to kick Blair’s ass for breaking your heart.”

Jim cocked his head, clearly listening for Blair, and then rose to open the door. Steven sighed in resignation.

Blair stepped into the loft, handing off one of the bags to Jim. “I wasn’t sure what else you might be running low on, and some of it was on sale, so I—oh, hey, Steven. Feeling any better?” Easily, Blair set his remaining two bags on the counter and hugged Steven.

“Yeah, my hangover’s gone now. A friend of mine is coming to pick me up so I’ll be out of your hair.” Blair’s relief was even more badly disguised than Jim’s, and Steven hid a smile. “Speaking of hair, man, you smell like bad incense. What did you do, buy out the store?”

Jim shut the door and set the bag he’d been given on the counter. “That was going to be my question, Chief.”

“No, I just figured since I don’t know when I’ll be able to go the apothecary next, it wouldn’t hurt to stock up. And yeah, the shop had some new girl running the counter and she was in love with the incense.”

“And a few other things,” Jim noted. “Surprised you didn’t notice.”

“Oh, I noticed and so did Sue Mai,” Blair said grimly, “but I was trying to ignore that she was flirting with me and taking too long to check me out. When she asked for ID, I just happened to let my shield show. She freaked and quit right on the spot. Had to call it in so the shop could be locked up. Sue Mai was laughing, by the way. Said she really can’t take me anywhere.” Blair grimaced. “At least this time nobody got hurt.”

“Oh, is that why you took all afternoon to get that stuff?” Jim asked, amused now as he started to unpack one bag.

“Yeah, Sue Mai dropped me off. She’d have come up, but she was meeting someone for dinner and didn’t want to be late.” Blair frowned. “And I thought I’d gotten most of the incense smell out, but I guess not if you smell it still, Steven.”

“You must’ve been in a hurry; you skipped your hair,” Jim told him, peering into another bag. “Here, take this into the bathroom with you.”

Steven’s grin grew wider. “Why don’t you wait until after I’ve left, and you can help him wash his hair, Jim?”

Jim glanced at Blair, who looked stunned, and then at Steven. Abruptly, Jim remembered he’d never told Blair that Steven not only knew how Jim felt about Blair, but also was supportive of it. Jim grinned. It was rare to see Blair speechless.

Enjoying himself, Jim said, “That’s a great idea. Someone’s coming upstairs, saying he remembered the last time he was here, the elevator was out then too.”

“Must be Rajesh. He was here for your birthday party,” Steven said.

“Oh, that Rajesh?” Jim asked, watching as Blair recovered. “He was a lot more comfortable here than David was.”

“If he’s on his way, then I’d better wait until you leave,” Blair decided. “Playing matchmaker, Steven?”

“If it means my brother’s happy, then hell yes,” Steven told him. “That way, he’s not tempted to go kick Lisa’s ass for cheating on me.”

“Sorry, but he’s already tempted, and so am I,” Blair replied. “We both thought she was better than that.”

“Yeah, well, that kid she was fucking can have her.”

“Kid?” Blair looked shocked. “I heard she was making out with the mayor’s son in Tokai’s.”

Steven groaned. “Great, my wife has no taste as well as no sense of discretion. No wonder Dad’s so pissed. And to think I almost didn’t make her sign a pre-nup.”

“You made her sign a pre-nuptial agreement?” Blair asked as he put away the contents of one bag underneath the kitchen counter. His voice carefully reserved judgment, but both brothers could tell he was shocked at the notion.

Steven scowled. “When Dad dies, I inherit the majority interest in Ellison Industries since Jim made it clear he wants nothing to do with running a business unless something happens to me. Dad wanted to be sure that wasn’t ever going to be a matter of contention with my new wife.”

“That’s cold,” Blair sputtered.

“Yeah, well, I learned it from a master,” the youngest Ellison said with a shrug. “Since I couldn’t really see her handling the business — either mine or Ellison Industries — I figured it wouldn’t hurt to sign the agreement. I honestly believed her when she said she just wanted to be a housewife and mother.”

“She certainly seemed sincere about it when you were dating her,” Jim offered. “Even after you two got married, she seemed thrilled to be your wife.”

“Clearly, the thrill is gone,” Steven declared morosely. “And she’s got horrible taste if she was with the mayor’s son. Ricky’s been an idiot since we were in grade school together.”

“An idiot with the right connections,” Jim warned him. “Which explains why Dad was so quick to get on your case about it.”

“Too bad there’s no such thing as a quickie divorce in this state. Jim, let Rajesh knock on the door. You keep forgetting that you freak people out when you open the door before they think you know they’re there.”

“But I like doing it,” his brother complained as Blair grinned.

“Still freaks people out,” Steven reminded him as Jim went to open the door.

Rajesh dropped his fist, which he’d raised to knock on the door. “I didn’t even knock,” he said, bewildered.

“Security camera,” Jim lied blandly. “Rajesh, good to see you again.”

“You too,” Rajesh said as Steven made his way to the door.

“Thanks for the pickup, Jim,” Steven said as he grasped his arm in the manly equivalent of a hug. “I’ll let you know when they release the car from impound so you can come get it with me.”

“Impound? What the hell did you do, Steven?” Rajesh asked as they made their exit.

Jim dismissed them from his mind as he shut the door, locked it, and then looked at Blair.

“My hair smell that bad?” Blair asked.

Jim shook his head. “I‘m dialed down. It can wait, if you want.”

For a second, neither man moved then they both did, kissing each other with the day’s pent-up hunger. Hunger turned quickly to action. Soon Blair was braced against the kitchen counter, his jeans and underwear shoved hastily down as Jim took him in his mouth, sucking him with expert skill until Blair came, shuddering helplessly through the throes of his orgasm.

Jim rose to his feet, a satisfied expression on his face as he declared, “Now you’re ready for a shower.”

Dazed, Blair let himself be undressed the rest of the way and led into the shower. Before joining him in the shower, Jim undressed with quick efficiency, amused at the sight of his normally talkative Guide silent. Jim decided he enjoyed being able to silence his lover in such a pleasurable way. Turning on the water, Jim adjusted the temperature, then took the handheld shower wand off its hook. Holding it over Blair’s hands, he asked, “Warm enough for you?”

“Yeah,” Blair agreed. “God, Jim, what else have you been hiding from me?” He handed the bottle of shampoo over to Jim. “You had me thinking you’d never been with a guy before.”

“You never asked,” Jim pointed out calmly, “and I enjoy kissing you. Now hold still so I can get your hair.”

Complying, Blair gave himself over to the pampering, as his hair was wet, shampooed, and rinsed. “You hated I cut it a few weeks ago, didn’t you?” he asked abruptly. “No more long ponytail.”

“Some,” Jim said with a shrug. “It was a shock. You fought so hard to keep your hair long through the Academy and after, and then you cut it just because you decided it was ‘time.‘ Now I can see your ears and the nape of your neck.”

Blair chuckled at that. “I can grow it out again,” he offered, taking the shower wand from Jim.

“Only if that’s what you want, and not because I want you to,” Jim said.

Blair considered the words, aware that there’d been a time when he’d been tempted to do what Jim wanted, if only to keep Jim happy.

“And if I said I didn’t?” Blair asked evenly, taking the bottle of shampoo and putting it on the shelf as Jim reached for the soap.

“Then don’t,” Jim said firmly, getting the soap wet and starting in on washing Blair’s neck, shoulders, and back.

Blair was quiet as Jim washed his legs then turned him around so that Jim could work on washing his front side and his arms.

“Don’t blow a circuit trying to figure it out, whatever it is,” Jim teased gently as he took possession of the shower wand and rinsed Blair off.

“Want me to return the favor?” Blair asked.

Jim shook his head. “Hot water’s almost gone. Why don’t you step out and get dried off and I’ll be out in a minute?”

“Not what I meant, but I’ll take that as a yes for later,” Blair said with a quick smile as he stepped out of the shower and reached for the lone towel on the bar installed in the wall. “I was just wondering about why you sucked me off and didn’t seem to react.”

After replacing the shower wand on its hook, Jim looked at Blair. “Oh, I reacted,” he assured his lover. “I enjoyed every minute of that. I just don’t want to blow my control all at once.”

Blair smacked himself lightly in the head. “Because you could zone on the pleasure.”

“Knew there was a reason you’re my Guide,” Jim said cheerfully as he stepped under the spray and soaped himself up.

“So how come you figured it out before I did?” Blair wondered as he dried himself off.

“You had part of it figured out with Laura, with the pheromones. I started wondering what else I needed to be aware of, and did some experiments of my own.”

“With who?” Blair asked suspiciously, as he fished through the pile of clothing to find his underwear.

“No one you can ask questions of,” Jim said quietly, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Blair sighed. “I wasn’t think—”

“Yes, you were,” Jim countered as he rinsed off and shut off the water. Blair handed him the same towel he’d been using. “Besides, it’s not like I told them what I was doing.”

“Oh.” Blair digested this. “So it’s easier on you if we go slow? Give your dials time to adjust?”

Jim’s reply was slightly muffled by the towel as he dried off his face. “Yeah. That’s why I wasn’t as upset as you were that Sara came over last night.”

Blair glared at him. “And you couldn’t tell me this sooner? Damn it, Jim, I was thinking you were a virgin! For weeks, you’ve been making me feel like I was seventeen again, trying to teach Mark that it was okay to make out a with a guy.”

Jim chuckled. “Not a virgin, just more careful since my senses came online.” Jim paused then reluctantly added, “And before you ask, my first experience was after Carolyn and I decided to get divorced.”

“And?” Blair asked with interest. Having found his underwear, he realized just how it smelled and dropped it into the hamper along with the rest of his clothes. He could always borrow a pair of Jim’s sweats and roll up the cuffs, since Jim was six inches taller, or tease his lover by continuing to be naked.

“He was a good friend,” Jim said, aware that if he didn’t give his lover the explanations now it would only delay the conversation. Still, he wasn‘t sure he could explain how his friend had helped him see he could enjoy being with a guy and helped him work through the baggage that revelation had inspired. Hoping he‘d said enough to satisfy Blair‘s need for information, Jim switched topics. “Indian okay for dinner or did you want Thai?”

“Indian? That new place over on Market delivers, or did you find somewhere else?” Blair asked as he stepped out of the narrow bathroom to give Jim more room to dry off.

“The new place on Market delivers,” Jim confirmed.

“Awesome,” Blair said. “I’ve wanted to try it. So is this friend still around?”

Jim studied Blair for any trace of jealousy and found only simple curiosity. “He moved to California a few weeks after I met you,” Jim said quietly, hanging the towel on the wall rod.

“Let me guess, right around the time I was asking all those questions about sex and your senses,” Blair said dryly as Jim exited the bathroom.

Jim nodded, remembering how much more terrified he’d been that a relative stranger had become so quickly entrenched in his life. For someone who hadn’t been used to sharing his life with anyone beyond work or what few close friends he had, Blair’s nearly insatiable curiosity about being a Sentinel had made Jim want to cling even more tightly to what few personal secrets he had left. “You were pretty relentless.”

“I was a jerk who didn’t know when to quit,” Blair replied bluntly. “And then you told me you didn’t care who I slept with as long as I didn’t have sex in the loft. You were the last person I knew who fit the idea of ‘open-minded.’ I barely knew you back then, so every time you did something that didn’t fit with my preconceived notion of you I had to scramble to fit in the new pieces. So if you’re thinking dinner, does that mean I can’t tempt you into a little more of what we did before we showered?”

“Sorry, Chief,” Jim said with genuine regret, “but I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I wasn’t hungry when Steven and I got back here.”

“How come?” Blair followed Jim into the kitchen.

“Dad was waiting at Steven’s place when we got there. When we didn’t show up, he called my cell phone and Steven switched it to speaker so I could drive and we both could talk. Ended having to pull over so I wouldn’t get us into an accident.”

“What did William do now?” Blair demanded.

“Accused Steven of deliberately being a bad husband and that if he had been more attentive in bed then maybe Lisa wouldn’t have to flaunt her indiscretions.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus. From the look on your face and the tone of your voice, your father said a hell of a lot more than that, didn’t he?”

Jim blew out a breath and headed towards the stairs. “Yeah. You left some clothes here a few weeks ago; I stuck them in the dresser in your old room.”

“Thanks. You want me to call in the order or did you?”

“You know what I like. Menu’s in the drawer under the phone if you want something different.”

“You know if you get dressed, I’ll just want to get you naked again,” Blair teased as he headed towards his old room, obviously confident that Jim could hear him. “Of course, that’s not really a threat, is it? Can’t call it a promise, either, not strictly speaking. More like a…hmm, I can’t even think of what to call that. A want? A stated goal? Sheez, not that it matters, but that is now so going to bug me. Man, no wonder half my closet’s missing; it’s all here.”

_I’d prefer if they were all here, but I don’t care where your clothes end up, Chief,_ Jim thought as he headed upstairs, _just as long as you never stop wanting me. _For a moment, the fear that he’d be left alone surged up in him and he closed his eyes against the pain, willing it to subside. Then the phone rang.

Remembering his earlier promise to Blair, Jim let the answering machine take it as he figured out what he wanted to wear.

“Ellison,” Simon’s voice boomed over the machine. “Call me back. It’s urgent — and it’s already on the news.” Jim could almost see the grimace in Simon’s voice as he added, “If you know where Rafe and Pezzini are, I’d really appreciate it.”

Hastily, Jim donned underwear and jeans, grabbing a pair of socks and a shirt from his closet, before heading downstairs. Blair had already switched on the twenty-four hour regional news channel and was pulling on a t-shirt. Like Jim, he’d put on jeans.

“— just happening,” the brunette said, the gleam of being able to report breaking news lighting her otherwise pedestrian face. “For those of you just joining us, there is a hostage situation inside this Ravensgate area women’s clothing store. According to eyewitnesses, a man walked into the store with a backpack and a gun. One clerk managed to escape and dial 911, saying that the man claims to have a bomb and has wired the entire shopping center. Police have begun evacuating the area as a precaution.”

Blair looked at Jim. “Know where Rafe and Sara might be?”

Jim started to shake his head, then saw his spirit animal, a jaguar, appear at the edge of his vision and walk to the door.

“What?” Blair demanded, then groaned as he, too, saw his own spirit guide, a gray wolf, join the jaguar at the door. For a moment, Blair closed his eyes, wishing he could ignore the missive the animals represented. Then he opened his eyes and blew out a breath. “It’s our day off, damn it. She’s the Wielder,” he said to the spirit guides.

In reply, the guides simply looked at the door, as if waiting for someone else to arrive.

Then an Asian man Blair didn’t recognize, but instinctively understood to be a ghost, stepped into the vision. “Yes, but she has to choose whom she can save, trust that her partner will believe, Shaman.”

“Who are you?” Blair demanded as Jim, not seeing the ghost, looked at Blair quizzically.

“Danny Woo,” and the ghost straightened his posture, snapped to attention as sharp as any police cadet. “I was her partner. She stopped listening to me years ago. She’s started to listen to you; you’re the one she saved. Hurry; you don’t have much time. There is more than one explosion ready to blow; you’ll need to Guide your Sentinel.”

“Who was that?” Jim demanded as the ghost faded away. He’d only been able to see the ghost speak the last sentence.

“Sara’s dead partner,” Blair said flatly. “The one she couldn’t save.”

Jim blanched at the thought and quickly donned the rest of his clothes before heading back upstairs to get his weapons and wallet. Blair stepped into his old bedroom and unlocked a gun safe, from which he pulled out his backup gun and a belt holster, wincing a little as he always did at the all-too-familiar ritual he remembered shunning once upon a more naïve time. He donned a flannel shirt to disguise the slight bulge and then put on socks and shoes, rejoining Jim at the front door. Jim reached for a windbreaker from the coat hooks by the door, checked his pockets for his cell phone and keys, and then nodded to Blair.

By habit and silent agreement, they took Jim’s truck, a late-model Ford that had finally been wired for police use after several months of grinding through the bureaucracy. Switching on the police lights, but not turning on the siren out of deference to his hearing, Jim called Simon on his cell phone.

“Ellison, where are you?”

“Just leaving my place,” Jim told him. “Why’d you ask about Rafe and Pez?”

“Why are all my detectives trouble magnets?” Simon asked heatedly.

Jim chuckled. “Hey, I turned the signal beacon off when I went off duty yesterday,” he told his captain. “And Rafe’s usually fine...unless he goes near Ravensgate Mall.”

Simon groaned. “Damn it. Listen, the bomb squad’s on the way, but no one’s answering inside the store. I need you and Sandburg here. How soon can you get here?”

“Fifteen minutes, max, if I turn on the siren.”

“Sandburg with you?”

Jim smiled grimly. “Nowhere else he’d rather be right now.”

“Oh, I can think of a few places, say, naked in bed,” Blair retorted in an undertone, loud enough for Jim to hear yet inaudible to Simon. Jim shot him a warning glare; now was not the time, no matter how much appeal the idea of being with his lover had.

“Then get here,” Simon ordered.

****

Pressing an already bloody, makeshift bandage on Rafe’s chest, Sara tried to keep calm. It wasn’t working. She could feel the rage build up inside her as the Witchblade thirsted for revenge. The gunman had already shot the clerk who’d been ringing up Sara‘s purchases, killing her instantly. He’d shot Rafe when Rafe had turned to face him, and had shot another customer when she’d stepped out of the dressing room. The gunman had forced two other customers to hold two grenades, their pins pulled; the grenades had been wired to another bomb at the bottom of the backpack he’d carried into the store. The three remaining customers huddled on the floor near the door directly behind those holding the grenades, right in the line of sight of anyone who stepped up to the door.

Sara knew she’d see his pockmarked, Neanderthal-like face in nightmares for years to come. He was as tall as she was, with a wiry, compact build. He had dark brown hair, worn tucked under a dark blue baseball cap. He wore a blue long-sleeved T-shirt, black jeans, well-worn workman’s boots, and an electrician’s gloves.

“What do you want?” Sara demanded, wishing the Witchblade hadn’t gone oddly silent. She needed to know more, to have that special insight into the perp that would give her the edge. She hadn’t had it fail her in years, and fought to manage the fear that it was ready to abandon her. She’d been working with Blair in guided mediation to help her fine-tune her control, and had thought she’d mastered it. In that instant, she knew she still had far more to learn.

“Peace, love, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and you in my bed,” the gunman cackled, stepping towards her. With the tip of his gun, he brought her chin up. “But it ain’t gonna happen, baby, if you don’t let go of your cop boyfriend here. You gotta let go.”

“In your dreams, pal,” Sara snarled, channeling her fear into anger.

“Pez,” Rafe rasped, “don’t push him.”

For a moment, Sara’s mind flashed back to a theatre in New York where another partner had lain dying. She’d played along, then, only to watch in horror as the criminal who’d wounded him shot him again with armor-piercing rounds, killing him. With a sick certainty, Sara knew the Witchblade was again testing her — the memory had had the too-sharp clarity she’d come to associate with the ‘blade’s visions. Rage at its machinations nearly choked her, but she shoved it aside. Later, she told herself, she could be furious. Right now, she had a partner and innocent lives to save. She could feel the Witchblade’s voices in the back of her mind, the malicious hum of amusement at her attempts to rein in its semi-sentience.

“I doubt anything I say is going to change his mind,” Sara told Rafe now, ignoring the frightened whimpers from one of the customers. “He’s got a bomb and two grenades. He’s not walking out of this store alive, and neither are we.” She ignored the pressure of the gun against her throat.

The bomber smiled. “Pretty and smart,” he said, stepping back and rising to his feet. “No wonder you’re a cop’s boyfriend.” He kicked Rafe in the ribs, and Rafe gasped at the sudden new pain, instinctively reaching for his newly injured side. “Too bad you picked Detective Armani here. He looks good on TV, but he’s too dumb to know when to give up.”

“Leave them alone,” one of the customers, a middle-aged matron, pleaded. “What do you want with us?”

“Just a little show of my appreciation, sugar,” the bomber drawled in a horrible Southern accent, moving towards her and crouching down next to her. “See,” he continued, using his gun to stroke her breast in an obscene parody of a caress, “we used to live in the most dangerous city in America, and the cops think they’ve won. I’m here to show them they don’t know jack.” The matron flinched away at the touch as Sara’s blood ran cold and she sat back on her heels.

Sara had been ready to rush the gunman, trusting the ‘blade to protect her, but she couldn’t control all the variables. This wasn’t the Rialto, where if anyone other than her got hurt, it wasn’t a big loss to society. Nor was it New York, where she hadn’t cared that she’d been branded a lone wolf and possibly unstable to boot. She was in Cascade, where she was expected to be a part of a team, where she was making progress in rebuilding her life, where she had friends — and a partner who wasn‘t dead yet. As if rewarding her patience, the ‘blade tightened slightly on her wrist, and she had an idea.

Returning to her task of keeping pressure on Rafe’s bullet wound, Sara met her partner’s eyes and leaned over to whisper to him. “Where’s your cell phone?”

“In my right pocket,” Rafe whispered back. “What are you going to do? If you reach for it, he’ll see.”

She smiled. “He won’t, trust me.” She willed the ‘blade to reach for the phone and dial 911. A green, metallic, alien-looking tendril escaped from the blade and snaked down to do just as she willed. Rafe’s eyes widened as he felt something reach into his pocket.

“Pez? That’s cold,” Rafe hissed. “How the hell can you do that if both of your hands are on me?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she promised, not intending to keep said promise. The 911 operator’s voice couldn’t be heard, thankfully, but the ‘blade told Sara when to speak. “Right now we’ve got three bombs to deal with, and not all of them are in this store.”

Moving carefully, Sara eased the phone out of Rafe’s pocket and dropped it to the floor before nudging it under a rack of skirts. The tendril of the Witchblade retracted, but not before Rafe caught sight of it. His pain-filled eyes widened.

“Shh,” Sara told him, hoping he wouldn’t remember this later. For a moment, she found herself wishing she had Jim’s senses so she could tell how badly her partner was injured. _Oh well, let’s see what I _can _do. _

As clearly as the afternoon last week when Blair had guided her through a meditation session, she heard Blair’s voice ask, “If you wield the glove of the witch— the Digitabulum Magae as you said — then doesn’t that by default make you the witch?”

She’d shot him a look that said she didn’t need any more mystical voodoo, thank you very much, but now…now, that gave her an idea.

Outside, the police had cordoned off and evacuated the area. The bomb and SWAT teams stood ready. Outside his own unmarked police car, Simon paced, wondering what else he could do. He wasn’t in charge of this operation, and it grated to have to accede to the SWAT team captain’s wishes. Captain Gutierrez was a good man, but Simon had clashed with him numerous times in the past over procedure — up to and including Simon’s authority to overrule him as the captain of the department that generally took over everyone else’s problems.

All Simon could do was to wait and pray, even as one part of him was relieved it wasn’t Ellison, Sandburg, or both of them being held hostage. They’d played that scene far too many times. Yet he couldn’t stop thinking that every time Rafe went even near Ravensgate, something happened to the detective.

Abruptly, the door to the store crashed open. A man fell out, his eyes wild and panicked as he tried to run away, screaming, “She’s got a fucking sword, man, she’s a witch, get her away from me!”

Striding out behind him, a bloodstained Sara Pezzini snarled, “Get up, little man. You think you’re gonna bomb this city to bits? You picked the wrong fucking city.” She held a thin metal rod in her right hand, and poked the man with it.

For a moment, Simon‘s vision of her shimmered, and he thought he saw the same thing the perp was seeing: Sara, holding a sword in her right, gauntlet-covered hand. Simon blinked and he saw her standing there in a blood-spattered white tank top, jeans, and boots, using a metal rod like it was a sword.

The man tried to move, but she had him pinned. “Get her away from me! She’s gonna kill me!”

“Stay where you are!” Captain Gutierrez barked. "Both of you! Hands up!"

“And let this idiot go? Detective Sara Pezzini, Major Crimes,” Sara replied, still holding the rod to pin down the perp. “Someone cuff this babbling idiot and get a medic. My partner and some civilians are inside and wounded.”

Captain Gutierrez strode over to where Simon stood. “That one of yours?” he asked.

“Yeah. She’s new.”

“Learned from the Sandburg school of improvised weapons, I see,” Gutierrez said drolly. “You teach that to all the rookies?”

“If it means they come out alive, hell yes,” Simon snapped, aware that for a SWAT man, Gutierrez lacked imagination. Annoyed, Simon grabbed a nearby uniform. “Cuff the suspect before my detective gets impatient.”

“Yes, sir,” the uniform said crisply.

It took several minutes, but soon the suspect was in custody and the wounded were sorted from the dead. Jim and Blair arrived just as Gutierrez began to grill Sara as Simon stood by.

“What was it that you were holding against the suspect, Pezzini?”

“That thing that helps you reach high stuff at a store,” she told him. “I’ll put it all in my report, but we got a bigger problem. There are two other bombs in the area, set to be remotely triggered from the backpack we recovered.”

Gutierrez eyed her suspiciously. “And how do you know that, Detective?”

Clearly exhausted and running out of adrenaline, she snapped, “I got my shield in a Cracker Jack box. How about you?”

“Easy, Pezzini,” Simon stepped in. Then he rounded on his fellow captain. “How about you pull that stick out of your ass and think just how long she might’ve been in that store with her partner shot, one civilian dead and another wounded, two other civilians forced to hold to live grenades — which , I might point out, the bomb squad is still trying to deal with? If you’d just think, maybe, just maybe, we can save a few more lives?”

Gutierrez stared up at Simon, who towered over him. “Fine. Your scene, Captain Banks,” he acquiesced with a snarl. “I’ll have my men standing by for your orders.” He took a step back, then walked off angrily towards his team.

“Nice to see he hasn’t changed,” Blair observed. “You okay, Pez?” He reached over to her, and felt a shock as he felt more than saw that the Witchblade was still transformed into a full gauntlet.

She shuddered. Instantly, Jim stepped up to grab her, sensing she was in shock. Like Blair, he‘d seen the transformed gauntlet, and now, holding her, he felt its heavy weight dragging her arm down. He had the uneasy suspicion that the Witchblade was draining her of energy as well. “She‘s going into shock," Jim told the other men. "Stay with us a little bit longer, Pez. Where are the other bombs?” he asked.

“Inside the mall,” she managed. “The dogs will find one, but you need to find the other. It’s still ticking, and you can’t send the dogs. He’s afraid of them and he’ll panic.”

The three men stared at her, then Simon moved to transfer her weight from Jim. “Go, quickly,” Simon ordered Jim and Blair. “Breathe, damn it, Pezzini, and don’t pass out on me now.”

The mall proper was just across the street from the shopping center. Sentinel and Guide ran to find the bomb as Simon eased Sara to the ground, called for a medic to check her out, and ordered a K-9 unit to find the other bomb, then another unit to follow Jim and Blair. Simon then ordered several uniforms to block the media from following the bomb sniffers.

Years of running together, of practicing for situations like this, had Jim and Blair moving as one. Ignoring the team that shadowed them, they wove through the mall on the hunt. They quickly outpaced their shadows.

“Where is he?” Blair asked as Jim paused to find the sound of the bomb. The mall hadn’t been evacuated, though for what reason neither man could figure, and it was still filled with people shopping.

Jim concentrated, filtering out everything but his Guide’s touch and the sound he was looking for. “This way,” Jim said, jerking his head down one of the three main wings of the mall. The sound of a terrified heartbeat overlaid the faint ticking.

“You sure?” Blair demanded as he took the moment to breathe and to make sure that their police badges were visible. “What are you hearing?”

“Ticking is faint. I think it’s down the Sears wing.” He knew the mall well enough to know that the Sears wing was to his left, the Macy’s wing directly ahead, and the JC Penny wing arced off at an angle to his right.

“All right, isolate it. What about the poor guy’s heartbeat, or his terror?”

Jim turned slowly, checking the three wings as he piggybacked the remembered smell of fear onto his hearing. Blair’s touch on his back, leaning into his left side, grounded him. “Macy’s wing, the American store,” Jim declared more decisively.

Blair stared at him. “Positive, this time?”

In reply, Jim grabbed his arm and began to run, leaving Blair no choice but to follow.

It wasn’t long before Jim and Blair arrived at a store that claimed it sold nothing but American-made clothing. As Jim got closer, he could hear and smell the terrified clerk more acutely, along with the bomb.

Letting go of Blair’s arm, Jim moved through the store towards the rear. The clerk, a slender young man who had the look of heroin chic down pat, was tied to a stool behind the counter, his mouth gagged by a ball gag. A grenade had been placed in his hand, the pin pulled out while a slender monofilament wire trailed from the grenade to a small wooden box on the floor.

“Easy, now,” Blair said soothingly as Jim maneuvered his way around the counter. “We’re cops, and we’re going to get you out of this.”

Carefully, Jim eased himself around the terrified clerk. To his amazement, the pin for the grenade was on the counter. Gambling, Jim took a chance.

“Hand me that pin, will you, Chief?”

For a frozen moment, Blair stared at him, then slowly followed Jim’s gaze to the counter. Picking it up, he handed it to Jim, who very carefully eased the clerk’s hands off the grenade and replaced the pin. The ticking promptly stopped.

Still holding the now-safe grenade, Jim pulled the ball gag out of the clerk’s mouth.

Gasping, the clerk panted, “Don’t call anyone. The bomb might still go off. That’s what he said.”

Jim nodded to Blair, who moved to intercept the bomb squad team that they’d left behind. “We won’t,” he promised. “We already had some other officers following us in, but they didn’t run as fast as we did. We won’t bring the dogs in, just the people to disarm the bomb. Think you can handle that?”

“Ye-yeah.” The clerk breathed shallowly. “No dogs. I-I can hold the grenade if you want to untie me.”

“You sure?” Jim asked, studying the clerk. He’d held up well so far, but the tension he radiated made Jim hesitate to remove the constraints. Putting the grenade back in the young man’s hand smacked of further endangerment. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore, but I do think we both need to stay put.”

“Oh. If you think it’s better.”

“I don’t know what the guy who did this to you might’ve put underneath you or the stool,” Jim pointed out.

“Nothing I know of,” the young man acquiesced. “Better not to push it, huh?”

Jim nodded.

“My name’s Evan. What’s yours?”

“Detective Ellison,” Jim replied, automatically reaching for and finding a reassuring voice. “Have you worked here long, Evan?”

“Three weeks yesterday,” Evan admitted. “I used to work at the Trend, but they wouldn’t work around my school schedule.”

“What are you studying?”

Evan shrugged as best as he could within his rope constraints. “Basic high school stuff. I’m a senior this year.”

“Know what you want to do when you get out of school?” Jim asked, hearing Blair and the two other officers approach.

Evan flashed him a grin. “Not work retail the rest of my life.”

*****

“Come on, Pez, let‘s take you home,” Jim said, startling her out of a near-doze as she slumped in the hard ICU waiting room chair.

“What are you doing here?” Sara asked dumbly.

Beside Jim, Blair grinned tiredly. "Following our good captain‘s orders. He wanted to make sure you got home and got some rest.”

”But Rafe —”

“Is not likely to be in any condition to talk to you for a while,” Jim said firmly. “I checked — they wheeled him out of surgery half an hour ago, but you were asleep and no one wanted to wake you. He‘s going to be fine.”

“I don‘t want to kick you out —” Sara began, looking at Blair.

Blair rolled his eyes and looked at Jim.

“Bed‘s big enough for three,” Jim said flatly. “We‘ll have the nurse call you when Rafe‘s more up to having visitors. Come on, Pez. That thing you‘re wearing has drained you and you‘re dead on your feet. Up, soldier.”

The command tone in Jim‘s voice had Sara raising her right hand almost robotically, as if the Witchblade drove the motion. Jim stared at her hand a moment before accepting it and using it to pull her to her feet. He hadn‘t even been aware he‘d used command voice until he‘d seen her reaction and belatedly realized he‘d slipped into that military mindset.

“Sara, you in the driver‘s seat?” Jim asked worriedly as he pulled her close. The smell of ancient metal was heavy in the air, and he could feel the ‘blade morph where her forearm lay against his chest.

Too exhausted to argue, Sara admitted, “Not entirely.” Looking up, she flashed Jim a weary smile. “Used to let it drive me home when I was this tired.”

Jim met Blair‘s eyes over Sara‘s head, seeing his horror at the thought reflected in Blair‘s face. “Then let us get you safe, okay? We‘ll take care of you,” Blair urged.

“Okay,” Sara said with a nod, and closed her eyes. The ‘blade morphed back into an innocuous-looking bracelet, and Sara exhaled tiredly. “Lead the way.”

By the time they arrived at Jim‘s loft, Sara was asleep. Careful not to wake her, Jim eased her into a firefighter‘s carry and proceeded to carry her all the way into his bed. Aware that there was no way he could get Sara into a shower while she was this asleep, Jim settled for stripping her out of the bloodstained clothing. A few of the disposable wipes Jim kept in the nightstand by the bed took care of any extraneous blood spatters, including what was in Sara‘s hair.

Helpfully, Blair took the clothing and relocated it to a trash bag, which Blair then took downstairs before checking that the loft was secure.

“I don‘t think I’ve ever seen someone so deeply asleep,” Blair whispered as he rejoined them and began removing his own clothing. Jim had lit a candle on his nightstand, wanting the vanilla and beeswax to counteract the smell of blood, and the fat candle was the only illumination in the room.

“I have, when I was in the Army,” Jim said quietly as he eased a now-nearly-naked Sara into the middle of the bed, “which tells me that she pays a heavy price for wearing that damned Witchblade.”

“Guess it‘s a good thing, then,” Blair pointed out calmly, “that we‘re all off duty for the next twenty-four hours.” He didn‘t quite manage hiding his shock at the knowledge, or the way his brain raced with the implications of such a price.

Quickly, Jim undressed and crossed the room to hold Blair. Closing his eyes briefly, Jim noted, “Doesn‘t mean that I have to like the idea she‘d let herself be taken over by that—”

“Shh, love, she made her choices a long time ago,” Blair soothed, pulling Jim closer and rubbing his back. “Let‘s just both hold onto the fact that she‘s alive, here, and we can make sure she doesn‘t dream bad dreams.” He took a deep breath and let it go, aware as always there was only so much in life under his control. “Nothing you and I can do but be there for her now; you’ve seen her fight to keep it, remember?”

Jim nodded slowly, remembering that first night when they‘d seen the Witchblade nearly rip Sara‘s wrist off in its attempt to abandon her. “I‘m just not seeing the value of it. Not when it exhausts her to this point.”

Blair shrugged. “More questions to ask her in the morning, then. You want the noise generator on or off?”

“On,” Jim decided before Blair reached over to the desk and switched on the machine.

Jim waited until Blair had climbed into bed on the side farthest from the stairs and pulled Sara‘s unresisting body into his arms so that her head was tucked into his chest, then Jim blew out the candle and climbed into bed on the side opposite Blair. Easing his arm around Sara and Blair, Jim let a little of the control he kept on his senses slide.

For a moment, the scent of the blood still in Sara‘s hair rose up to choke him, and Jim‘s grip on Blair tightened slightly.

“Easy, Jim,” Blair reminded him softly, kissing what he could reach of the inside of Jim‘s arm without jostling Sara.

Deliberately, Jim grounded himself in the familiar, reaching across Sara‘s body to find Blair reaching back for him. After a few moments‘ sorting out what was filtered by the white noise generator and what wasn‘t, Jim located Sara‘s heartbeat, even, steady in sleep, then overlaid it with the sound of Blair‘s heartbeat, the scent of vanilla and beeswax, the now-familiar feel of Sara pliant in sleep against him, and the memory of Blair‘s kiss. It wasn‘t long before Jim and Blair joined Sara in slumber.

****

Blair woke abruptly. Sunlight streamed through the skylight. In sleep, Sara had curled up around him, effectively trapping him, but the side Jim had slept on was empty, as neatly made as Jim could have made it given who else was still asleep. Carefully, Blair eased out of Sara‘s embrace, freezing when she stirred briefly before rolling over and out of his arms. A glance at the desk told Blair that the white noise generator was off. All the clothing he and Jim had discarded the previous evening had been collected, undoubtedly already in the laundry hamper downstairs. A pair of sweatpants and a Cascade PD t-shirt sat on the desk along with a note.

_Running errands, back by 10. If you‘re up before I‘m back, call. — J. _

Aware he had clothes in his old room, Blair left the pile alone and headed down to take a shower. The noise from the pipes would undoubtedly wake Sara up, but it couldn‘t be helped. A glance at the clock in the kitchen told Blair he‘d slept nine hours; much more than that, Blair knew, would make him feel logy the rest of the day.

He was just in the midst of drying off when Jim returned. Poking his head out of the bathroom, Blair looked into the kitchen and saw that Jim had made a grocery run.

Jim broke off from his putting away of the groceries to kiss his lover a lingering hello before stepping back. “You‘re getting me wet,” he complained, his hand indicating Blair’s still dripping hair.

“A leading statement, Detective,” Blair teased. “Want to follow that up?”

“Later,” Jim promised, his eyes flickering upward to indicate their guest.

“Is she still asleep?” Blair wondered. “I thought maybe I‘d accidentally woken her up when I got out of bed, but that was over an hour ago.”

Jim listened for a moment, shaking his head. “Well, even if you didn‘t, she‘s waking up now.”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to wait,” Blair decided with a sigh. He dried off his hair, then waited until Jim had started to put away the groceries again.

“Hey, Jim?”

Jim looked up from the bag and Blair smiled his best seductive smile, then, still naked, slowly sauntered into his old bedroom. After the revelation of Jim’s desire to control his senses when it came to sex, Blair wasn’t above turning that information to his advantage.

He was just inside the French doors when a familiar hand grabbed him, pulled him close, letting him feel the heat of Jim’s erection. “Don’t promise what can’t be delivered, Chief,” Jim growled.

“Who said I can’t deliver?” Blair asked breathlessly.

Jim murmured, “Me.” His breath was hot on Blair’s ear, and passion blazed a scorching trail through Blair as he trembled in the not-quite-close enough embrace. Jim’s body was a hair’s breadth away, close enough to feel the heat pouring off his skin, too far away to be the kind of close Blair wanted.

“Jim, please,” Blair begged, instinctively moving closer.

As if that was the cue, Jim left.

“Jim!” Blair protested. He turned, but he wasn’t fast enough — Jim had already exited the room.

Shuddering, Blair willed his erection to subside, mentally swearing at his lover even as he admired the way Jim had upped the ante. Getting Sara home to her own place suddenly seemed like priority number one.

By the time Blair finished getting dressed, Jim had coaxed Sara out of bed with coffee. She sat at the breakfast bar, looking a lot less like the zombie she’d been the night before and far more human. She was working on her second cup.

“I don’t remember getting here,” Sara said as Blair entered the kitchen and accepted the cup of tea Jim handed him.

“You were asleep,” Jim told her as Blair took the seat beside her. “You did manage to say that you let the Witchblade drive when you’re that tired.”

Sara blinked at that. “Well, that explains how I used to get myself home in New York,” she murmured.

“You don’t even remember?” Blair asked, astonished.

Sara shook her head. “No. Did something happen yesterday? I remember shopping for a dress with Rafe and then I don’t remember much else.”

Stunned, Jim and Blair said nothing for a long moment. “You don’t remember the bomber?” Jim demanded, his voice hard.

Startled, Sara flinched. “I was hoping that was the same nightmare I’ve been dreaming of and not real.”

“Then you do remember.” Jim’s mouth tightened in a thin line. “Damn it, Pez, when were you going to tell us you had a vision of this?”

“You know I don’t know what the hell’s real in my dreams and what’s past!” she snapped.

“You know it’s real,” Blair interjected quietly, angrily. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be so terrified about it. Did you think that if it only involved you, it didn’t matter?”

Sara stared at them, clearly reluctant to admit they were right. Finally, she admitted, “In my dreams, the bombs went off, and no one survived except me. No one believed I could survive a fireball like that.”

“Did you survive one like that?” Blair asked.

“Three,” Sara said, almost challenging him to disbelieve. "At most, I walk away with some bruises, maybe a few scratches."

Blair whistled softly. “Damn, that thing makes you damn near immortal,” he surmised. “How far does its protection go?”

Sara met his gaze. “Until I’m dead, someone cuts it off my arm, or it no longer wants me.”

“And until then?” Jim challenged her, not liking the revelation at all. This went beyond his own sense of freakiness into the mystical realm he hated, if only because every time the mystical got involved, it was something he was inevitably something he wished he didn‘t know.

She said nothing for a long moment, taking momentary refuge in studying her coffee cup. “I don’t know,” she confessed softly. “I’m living this the only way I know how. Not like I have a guide.”

“What about your partner?” Jim suggested.

“You want me to trust Rafe with this?”

“Got any better ideas?” Jim drawled angrily.

“I’m not going to steal your Guide,” Sara snapped. “Just borrow your shaman once in a while.”

“I’m not a toy you can fight over,” Blair shot back, annoyed. “If you‘re not going to talk to ghosts, Sara, then yeah, talk to the partner you have, the friends you’ve made. Let us help you.”

For a moment, Sara froze. “I’ve never talked to gho—”

Jim rolled his eyes impatiently. “Yes, you have,” he countered. “Same way I have. Quit thinking you‘re alone, Sara. You‘re not. When are you going to stop letting that damned thing feed your paranoia?”

Sara stared at them.

Shaking his head, Blair took Sara‘s right hand in his and squeezed it reassuringly. “Didn‘t you say you wanted to start over here? Who‘s to say that not letting your partner know you wield the Witchblade would be worse?”

Sara swallowed past a suddenly dry throat. “And if I‘m wrong?”

“Did my knowing you‘re the Wielder stop someone from trying to kill me a few months ago?” Blair asked evenly.

Sara didn‘t reply, knowing the answer was no.

“Just think about it, Pez,” Jim suggested, reaching over to pat her shoulder, his temper evaporating as he read her fear. “Nothing says you have to decide right now.”

“Why do you think I should tell anyone else?" Sara asked tightly. “Isn‘t the fact you two know enough?”

“Depends. Did Rafe see anything?” Blair returned.

Avoiding the question, Sara rose to her feet. “I should get going; I‘ll just catch the bus back to my place. My clothes from last night?”

“In the bag on my old bed,” Blair told her reluctantly. As much as he wanted to spend time with Jim, Blair recognized Sara was retreating, and nothing he could do to stop her.

Jim‘s arms reached around Blair, holding him close. “Let her go,” Jim murmured quietly when Sara moved into Blair‘s old bedroom. “She‘ll either figure it out or not.”

“And if she doesn‘t and Rafe comes to us, looking for answers?” Blair asked.

“We‘ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Jim said grimly.

****

“Hey, you‘re awake, and they took the throat tube out,” Sara greeted Rafe cheerfully as she stepped into the hospital room three days later. She ignored her own exhaustion in favor of focusing in on her partner‘s recovery. Somehow, knowing he‘d survived hadn‘t seemed real until now, and she fought the urge to collapse in relief. All she’d been able to think of since she left Jim’s was how much worse the events at Ravensgate could have been. Since talking to Jim and Blair, and after reading the report she didn’t remember giving along with the other reports from the scene, she’d been able to sort out what had actually happened versus what she’d seen in her Witchblade-fueled nightmares.

“Yeah, they tell me I got really lucky,” Rafe told her as she pulled a chair up to his bedside and he muted the TV he’d been watching. “Said the bullet just fractured two of my ribs and went right through the space between the heart and esophagus, but I‘ll be here the rest of the week. They don‘t want me moving anything until my ribs are more healed.” Rafe grimaced. “That guy kicked like a horse; bruised a few things I don‘t really want to think about.”

“That‘s good to hear,” Sara said, relieved. “Speaking of the guy, Captain Banks said he‘s not getting out of jail soon. The other bombs were found, with help from Jim and Blair.”

Rafe nodded, clearly not surprised that Jim and Blair had been called in to assist. “Where were the other bombs?”

“One was in the food court, in one of the support pillars,” Sara told him. “The other was strapped to a teenage clerk in a store down in one of the other wings. Kid‘ll be all right.”

“Yeah, with some therapy,” Rafe said sadly. He paused. “What about the woman in the store with us who was shot when she came out of the dressing room?”

Sara met his gaze, aware that they‘d both written the woman off while in the store. “DOA.”

Rafe closed his eyes briefly. “Anyone else hurt?”

“Not unless you count Captain Gutierrez‘s pride.”

The thought brought a smile to Rafe‘s lips. “Oh, Banks ripped him a new one, again?”

Surprised, Sara looked at her partner. “You mean to say this is a habit?”

“Yeah. Gutierrez is convinced that Banks can’t do his job, even though Banks has been captain of Major Crime longer than Gutierrez has been a captain, period.”

Sara winced. “Ouch. Guess it‘s a good thing I was never interested in SWAT, then.”

“Oh, I don‘t know. That sword of yours was a nice touch.”

For an instant, Sara froze. Abruptly glad her partner wasn‘t a Sentinel, she said quickly, “What sword? I was using that metal thingy the clerks use to get stuff from the high wall displays.”

Rafe looked at her, clearly not buying it. “I know what I saw, Sara. You turned yourself into a medieval knight and it drove the perp insane. Plus, you didn‘t use your hands when you grabbed my phone.”

“Sounds like they’ve got you on the really good drugs, partner,” Sara dodged. “Listen, I need to get to work, but I wanted to make sure you‘re doing OK.”

Rafe said nothing for a moment, clearly studying her. “Just dying of curiosity," he told her finally as she fidgeted and rose to her feet. “You know us detectives. Give us a mystery and we‘re bull terriers trying to figure it out. Better get going before Banks dumps more paperwork on you.”

Already halfway to the door, Sara hesitated; her instincts warning her Rafe wouldn‘t rest until he knew the truth. Without turning, she said quietly, “Some things aren‘t worth knowing, Brian.”

“Maybe not,” he replied, just as quietly. “But I‘d like to know I‘m not crazy.”

Not trusting herself to speak, Sara simply shook her head before she resumed her progress out of the hospital room.

Nearly at the door, Rafe’s voice stopped her. “Just keep in mind, Sara, that yours wouldn’t be the first secret I’m keeping.”

Sara had a flash of Rafe dragging a tear-gassed and half-zoned Jim out of a warehouse, Rafe’s voice snapping out impatiently as he tried desperately to keep Jim present, “You’re a Sentinel, not some goddamn Superman, and don’t think I didn’t figure out Blair was lying to protect your damn ass. No one who knew him believes that damn conference was anything other than a lie. Stay pissed at me, damn it, or dial it down, or whatever the hell shit Blair tells you when you’re being an ass like this.”

“Dialing,” came Jim’s pain-roughened voice, “and if you tell him I zoned your ass is mine.”

Rafe laughed shortly. “We’ll discuss who owns who later, Ellison. Right now all you’ll be seeing is the ass of an EMT.”

For a moment, the vision shifted and she heard Jim’s voice remind her, “You’re not as alone as you think, Sara. Quit listening to that damned thing’s paranoia.”

The vocal reminder made Sara close her eyes briefly, made her wish she could ignore the message, made her remember that the price of fighting the clues that the Witchblade sent her, however vague, was often higher than she wanted to pay. She’d chosen Cascade because she’d dreamed that the city held a place of sanctuary for her. Maybe, she thought, it was past time she trusted in her partner.

With a sigh, Sara opened her eyes and checked her watch. She was going to be late to work, even if she hurried now. Turning, she looked at the man in the hospital bed, feeling as though one wrong move on her part would cause something to change. She’d made so many bad choices before by not trusting enough, or trusting the wrong people, or believing the ‘blade alone could help her stop the wheel of fate from turning.

_If a Sentinel can’t function well without a partner, what was a Wielder without a backup, someone who could cover for her when the world turned crazy?_ Sara asked herself.

_Alone, nearly insane with grief, and unable to explain what happened, that’s what, _she reminded herself. _If Jim trusts Rafe to back him up, to know what to do, then maybe I should. Jim would’ve done something if he didn’t agree with my choice of partner. So would have Blair._

Rafe watched her, his face reflecting his curiosity.

Moving closer to Rafe, Sara took a deep breath and willed the Witchblade to morph. She held herself still, feeling the now-familiar weight of the armor against her skin. For half a heartbeat, she felt the ‘blade want to shift into the more exotic, clothing-shredding alien armor, and she willed it to stay in the more conventional (and less revealing) medieval armor.

Rafe stared at her and swallowed hard. “Handy Halloween costume you got there, Pez,” he teased lightly. “That something you inherited or did you get it courtesy of some tribal shaman?”

“Wish it was a tribal shaman,” Sara returned evenly as she willed the ‘blade to shift back, “if that shaman was Blair.”

Rafe chuckled, then sobered. “You don’t have to tell me anything more right now,” he said gently. “I know this is a hell of a place to have a private conversation. But you wanted to bring me some reading material later, I’d appreciate it.”

Relieved, Sara let go of the breath she’d been unconsciously holding. “I’ll see what I can find,” she said. “Some of it — you may have to ask Blair.” She gave Rafe a half-smile. “He’s better at this myth stuff than me.”

“I’d rather hear it from you first,” Rafe told her. “But like I said, it can wait. I’ll even trade why I prefer going by Rafe than my first name.” He shot her a grin. “Now that I know I’m not crazy.” He winked. “Just on some really great drugs.”

“Just don’t get hooked on them,” Sara advised, her heart lighter than it had been in weeks. “I still need a partner.”

Rafe met her gaze and nodded crisply. “You got it, Pez.”

****

“This just sucks,” Steven declared as he sat in the loft’s living room later that same day. “I get my car back, but I can’t drive my own damn car?”

“So why not go the limo route?” Blair asked as he put away the last pan from their dinner and then poured himself a glass of juice.

Both Ellison brothers grimaced. “Had that growing up,” Steven replied. “Dad almost didn’t let us learn to drive, and then he turned it into yet another pissing match.”

“Plus, Steven’s got to be careful,” Jim noted. “If he uses a limo, Lisa’s attorney could make a case for more money.”

Blair frowned as he joined the brothers on the couch, taking the seat that allowed him to lean into Jim’s embrace while facing Steven. “But if you’ve already filed the separation papers and you’re moving out —”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jim countered. “Carolyn’s lawyer wanted her to go after my trust fund, even though Carolyn insisted she didn’t want anything more than just to not be legally tied to me anymore.”

Steven groaned. “Can I sue Lisa for adultery? I had no idea she’d been counting zeroes since she took my last name until I came home Saturday when Rajesh dropped me off.”

“Not as far as I know,” Jim told Steven. “But if you wanted to drag this out, I’m sure Henderson would love to play as dirty as you need to. He was a big help to me with my divorce.”

Steven snorted. “No. Much as I hate to say it, Dad has a point about not turning this into a circus.”

“I don’t know, Steven,” Blair remarked, “but if you wanted to go by playground rules, she started the circus first. Of course, I’m not advocating you play at her level.” He took a sip of his drink, not entirely surprised when Jim shamelessly stole the glass to quench his own thirst.

Catching the movement, Steven grinned. “And here I thought you were a pacifist, Blair.”

Blair’s eyes gleamed. “A pacifist with a big stick,” he shot back. “Besides, she vowed to be faithful to you, and I don’t like it when my friends get hurt.” He paused. “Have you talked to Lisa since Friday?”

Steven hesitated, then said, “Nothing I’d care to repeat.” His gaze met Jim’s. “You’re on duty Thursday night at the Cascade Hope ball, aren’t you?”

Jim shook his head. “No, not since I told the commissioner he couldn’t parade me around like a prize bull.”

“For what?” Steven asked. “Because you’ve been Cop of the Year three times, you’re an Ellison, or both?”

“Both,” Jim answered grimly. “More of the latter than the former.”

Steven rolled his eyes and sat back in disgust.

“What?” Surprised, Blair turned to his lover. “Is that why we’ve been getting the ‘hold down the fort’ duty the last two years?”

Jim nodded. “He was going to start in on you next, Chief. Show you off as his greatest achievement — as if he had anything to do with you being hired on as a special investigator in the first place. Never mind that having him single us out like that means we can’t do our jobs, which is to protect the attendees, not be in the spotlight.”

Blair groaned. The previous commissioner, once shown the impressive array of cases Blair had contributed to as a civilian, had been more willing to hire Blair as a special investigator, provided Blair go through at least an abbreviated version of the police academy so that the city’s insurance carrier’s requirements would be satisfied. The current commissioner alternated between loving the solve rate Blair helped generate and wanting Blair to jump through more qualification hoops, including performing more politically motivated research.

“And to think I voted for that bastard,” Steven muttered. “Damn. If I don’t go, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“I take it you and Lisa were supposed to be at the party Thursday night,” Blair surmised.

Steven nodded. “It’s one of the social events of the year,” he reminded Blair. “Knowing Lisa, she’ll convince Ricky to take her.”

“No chance of you staying home?” Blair asked.

Jim and Steven looked at each other. “Unfortunately, no,” Steven answered. “Jim’s always had the perfect excuse for standing up our father, but I don’t. It would mean more trouble if I didn’t show than if I did.” Steven grimaced. “The Ellison family‘s been a major contributor since it started. Not that I don‘t support the cause; I just hate the big deal Dad makes of it."

"Have you mentioned that to him?" Blair asked.

"Wouldn‘t make a difference," Steven told him. "Oh, well, not the first time I’ve ever gone alone."

"So why‘d you ask if we were going to be there?" Blair wondered.

"Because Lisa promised to make a scene, and she‘s less likely to do it if you‘re there," Steven said, resigned. He rose to his feet. “Listen, I don’t know about you two, but it’s been a hell of day for me. Borrow your keys, Blair?”

“Sure. They’re on the table by the door — the one with the wolf keychain. I thought you were going to sleep in my old room here,” Blair said, puzzled.

Steven shook his head as he headed for the door. “Nah, I’ll leave you two alone tonight. Sleep well — or don’t, as the case may be.” He detoured long enough to pull his suitcase out of Blair’s old room, then waved them goodbye.

“Should I be scared of why your brother seems determined to make sure we’re together, or not look a gift horse in the mouth?” Blair wondered moments after the door had shut.

“I have a better idea,” Jim suggested, then kissed him until the only thoughts Blair had were of Jim, pleasure, and how good it all felt together.

****

Simon looked up from his paperwork as Rafe entered his office, followed by Sara. “Good to see you back, Detective,” Simon said with a smile as Rafe handed him a piece of paper, which turned out to be a doctor’s release authorizing the detective to return to limited duty for two weeks, with full duty pending another checkup. “How are you feeling?”

“Still sore,” Rafe admitted with a smile as he took a seat. “But I’m ready to get back to work.” He glanced at Sara, who shut the door before taking the other seat in front of Simon’s desk.

“Before I do,” Rafe continued, “I think there’s something you should know.”

Simon narrowed his gaze, not liking the implication of those words. “Out with it,” he growled. “And this better not be anything like Ellison’s…skills.”

Sara shook her head. “No. Short version is that I’m the owner of a mystical bracelet. It makes me psychic. People have killed to own this bracelet.”

“And you keep it because?” Simon held up a hand before Sara could reply. “No, don’t answer that. It’s your destiny, right?” At Sara’s nod, he sighed grumpily. “Bad enough this city’s the most dangerous in America, I have to know this as well.” He focused his glare on Rafe. “You knew this?”

“Not until a few days ago, sir. I convinced Pez it was in our best interest to inform you.”

“Does this bracelet affect your performance as a cop?” Simon demanded, turning to Sara.

“I try not to let it interfere,” Sara replied. “It has helped me in the past to find evidence.”

Simon considered this, aware that he relied upon Jim’s Sentinel abilities. “Make sure your evidence is rock-solid,” he warned her. “That goes for you, Rafe. If you act on one of her ‘hunches’ — and that’s all they are, ‘cop instincts’, understood — make sure you’ve got the evidence to back it up. Anything else I should know about this…bracelet?”

“It’s called the Witchblade,” Sara informed him. “I’m called the Wielder.”

Rafe nudged her.

“Wielder of what?” Simon asked suspiciously.

In reply, Sara stood and extended her right arm. The bracelet on her wrist shimmered, shifted. For a moment, Simon could only stare in disbelief. Stepping around the desk, he reached out to touch her. The cold metal of the gauntlet was real, and the sword she held looked sharp enough to cut flesh.

“I’m not seeing this, you understand, Pezzini?” Simon said harshly, stepping back.

“Of course you aren’t, Captain,” she replied sardonically. “Nobody uses a sword anymore, but I happen to carry a knife for defensive purposes.”

“As do I,” Rafe agreed.

“You put me in a hell of a position,” Simon snapped, looking at them. “Go on, get out of here. Turn that damn thing off, Pezzini, and go see if you can’t solve the cases on your desk. With _ordinary_ cop skills.”

“Yes, sir,” Sara said as the thing on her wrist shifted back to something innocuous. She rose, waited for Rafe to do the same, and the two headed out of the office.

Alone again, Simon leaned his face into his hands and took a deep breath. He didn’t know what to make of the fact that he had a Sentinel as his top detective and now a Wielder, but he was certain of one thing. If there was truly something to this destiny stuff — and given everything he’d heard on the subject from Blair and Jim — then it seemed to reason that Cascade was headed for something huge. Silently, Simon hoped it was something good; the city needed to turn the tide against the insanity that seemed to litter its streets with crime and terrorism.

_Maybe,_ he thought, _a Sentinel and his Guide can’t do this alone. Maybe that’s why Pezzini’s here._

Ever the pragmatist, Simon snorted at his fancifulness and returned his attention to his paperwork. Pezzini might have something magical, but she was still a cop, just like Jim and Blair were, and there was little room for the mystical in enforcing the law.

Outside Simon’s office, Sara looked at Rafe. “That went well,” she said sarcastically.

“Could’ve been worse,” Rafe disagreed. “Thank you for telling him.”

“Happy now?”

Rafe sighed. She hadn’t been as completely honest with Simon as she had been with him, but he conceded she’d communicated the parts that would most affect work. The rest would matter, or not, as time went on; he was just glad he knew as much as he did so he could cover for her.

Nodding, he asked, “You mentioned we got assigned a new case?”

Sara’s relieved smile at his question told him she was grateful he wouldn’t press the issue. Rafe accepted her silent gratitude, aware they had a ways to go with their partnership, but that her trust was a precious gift. Now he was sure they’d make it through, no matter what got in the way.

_Finis_

_11.27.2008_, revised 6.24.09

 


End file.
